Friday, October 28

Brazil's Youth See Their Future, And Her Name Is Ana Júlia
by Shannon Sims in Forbes.
OCT 27, 2016 @ 12:53 PM
It has 42,908 VIEWS till now. I thank Shannon Sims to tell the world a little bit of what is happening in Brazil. As always with the help of US.

A girl bears a sticker in her mouth reading ‘Education on strike’ during a teachers protest demanding better working conditions and against police beating, on October 7, 2013 in Rio de Janeiro, one of the events that laid the road for Ana Julia’s speech yesterday. (YASUYOSHI CHIBA/AFP/Getty Images)

The news out of Brazil tends to be rough. Political turmoil. Corruption scandals. Arrests. Rapes. Deaths. Outrage. It can be exhausting to cover Brazil as a journalist; imagine how exhausting it must be to live Brazil as a Brazilian.

But today, good news, from an unlikely place. Over the past 24 hours, Brazil has become acquainted with what many Brazilians believe is the most promising voice it has heard in years. And remarkably, it is the voice of a 16-year-old girl named Ana Júlia Ribeiro.

In a video that has gone viral on Brazilian social media, Ana Júlia (Brazilian custom refers to people by their first name) addressed the legislative assembly of the state of Paraná yesterday.

Below, the video, which is in rapid-fire Portuguese. And below the video, an explanation in English of what is happening.

Ana Júlia’s Address
So what’s going on here? Ana Júlia is addressing the government leaders of the state of Paraná about the escalating crisis that has gripped many – over 1,000 – of the country’s schools. With a thick Paraná accent, she begins her speech with a question that has already been quoted repeatedly on Brazilian social media: “Who is school for?” She goes on to answer her rhetorical question by explaining why she believes the movement occupying schools – which is ideologically associated with the left-wing – is legal and legitimate.

She invites the politicians present to visit the occupied schools and says it is “an insult” that the students occupying the schools have been called “doctrinated,” which in Brazil carries the meaning of mindless dedication to a cause. With startling honesty, she admits that it is challenging for young students to be able to digest all of the politics and policies presented in the media and to then determine whether they will favor or counter them. “It is a difficult process, it is not easy for students to simply decide what to fight for. But still we’re lifting up our heads and confronting this.”

She proclaims, “Our flag is education, our only flag is education,” and argues that the controversial government program “escola sem partido” or “schools without political parties,” which forbids political discourse in the classroom, insults students by telling them that they don’t have the capacity to think for themselves. She adds, “Only, we do.”

Context

In the Brazilian state of Paraná, the educational crisis is particularly acute. Presently, 850 schools are occupied across the small state. And the issue of education and protests in Paraná has a difficult history. It was in Curitiba, the capital of Paraná, that about a year ago public school teachers filled the streets in protest of changes to their pension plans. Their protest was met with violence from the state, and over 100 teachers were injured. Scenes of teachers being beaten by police sent shockwaves around the country and laid the groundwork for Ana Júlia’s address yesterday.

Now, another tragic scene echoes those protests. On Monday, a student named Lucas Mota, was killed inside one of the occupied schools in Paraná. He was found with knife wounds to his chest, reportedly caused by another student after an argument over drugs. On the one hand, his death reaffirmed the position of those opposing the occupy schools movement that the students involved are trouble-makers taking advantage of the state. At the same time, Mota’s death has added fuel to the occupy movement, which was previously a protest that fell more under the umbrella of a protest over government policies, but that increasingly has become, for its supporters, a protest about human rights. Or, more specifically, students’ rights. And now carrying that umbrella, with a shaking voice that belies a firm determination, is young Ana Júlia.

At the most dramatic moment in her address to the assembly, Ana Júlia brings up Mota’s death. “I was at Lucas’ wake yesterday, and I didn’t recognize any of your faces there,” she says to the wide-eyed politicians in the assembly. “You all represent the state, and so I invite you to look at your hands. Your hands are dirty with the blood of Lucas. Not just of Lucas but of all the adolescents and students that are victims of this.”

At this moment in her speech, the hall erupts in applause from those attending the session in the rafters, and shouts from the politicians on the floor. “My hands aren’t dirty!” one politician counters. The president of the assembly, Ademar Traiano, who represents a centrist-right party, interrupts the session at this point and threatens to close the session entirely. “You can’t attack parliamentarians here,” he says angrily to Ana Júlia, over the boos of the crowd. “Here no one has hands stained with blood,” he adds.

It is a powerplay that would make most of us cower – an esteemed politician shutting down a speaker’s claim – and it is in this moment that Ana Júlia’s star shines brightest. The young teenager doesn’t try to shout over the president of the session, she doesn’t disrespect him or engage in an argument. Instead, she steels herself and calmly issues the most scathing critique at all. “I apologize, but the Statute of the Child and Adolescent tells us that the responsibility for our adolescents ­– our students – lies with society, the family, and the state.” The word “state” lands like a mic drop in the session.

To be sure, Ana Júlia is taking a a political position. She is against Temer’s recent push to tighten up the education system by forbidding political discourse within the classroom and by freezing the system’s expenditures. As seen in the most recent municipal elections, many – and quite possibly most – Brazilians are likely to disagree with Ana Júlia.

But what makes Ana Júlia’s speech rare and share-worthy is that while she represents a political opinion that many do not agree with, the way she carries herself is so self-possessed and even-keeled that it has drawn the respect of even Brazilians who might disagree with her position. She doesn’t read from a script, but instead she bobs and weaves through laws and constitutional amendments like an established scholar giving a university lecture. The fact that she is only 16 is what turns her into an instant beacon of political promise for those who support her position.

This moment in which Ana Júlia stars is a heavy one. The latest round of municipal elections was a rout for the leftists of Brazil. Cities that were once led by bike-riding progressives, as in the case of São Paulo, booted those politicians from office and voted in centrist-right leaders last month.

It was a sea change election that echoed what is going on at the federal level in Brazil, where the leftist Dilma Rousseff has been impeached from office, and the centrist-right Michel Temer has taken over, vowing to unravel many of the leftist policies that have steered the country over the past 13 years.

Temer – who is 76 years old and could be Ana Júlia’s grandfather – has made quick work of this promise. One of the key targets of his reform efforts has been Brazil’s education system. This week, a controversial Constitutional amendment, called the PEC 241, passed through lower house of Congress on Tuesday. The new amendment would put a ceiling on government funding for education and puts a 20-year freeze on educational expenditures.

The amendment’s advocates believe this type of belt-tightening is required in order to get the country’s stalled economy moving again and to protect that process from political tampering over the next two decades. Critics of the proposal believe that the 20-year freeze is draconian in its impact (one study shows it could pull $8 billion out of the education system per year) and point out that educational expenditures are being frozen at the same time that government salaries are being raised. Next week, the Brazilian Senate will begin debating the amendment.

Wednesday, October 19

"Bed rest" may sound like a gentle, healing process, but this is deceptive. Our bodies are made to move, and multiple problems quickly start to set in even after a couple of days of immobility."

"Bed rest" may sound like a gentle, healing process, but this is deceptive. Our bodies are made to move, and multiple problems quickly start to set in even after a couple of days of immobility. Collectively, these negative effects are referred to as "deconditioning" of the body, and can have a serious impact on health. (emphasis mine)

Medical professionals have increasingly realized that, as soon as possible after, or even during, a hospitalisation or illness that necessitates time in bed, patients should begin physical therapy to avoid or lessen these effects. Some of these are listed here:

Effects on the muscles and bones
The musculo-skeletal system functions best when supporting the body in an upright posture against gravity. The weight-bearing muscles of the neck, abdomen, lower back, buttocks, thighs and calves are particularly important for this purpose, and the deterioration caused by bed rest affects these muscles most seriously.

When muscles aren’t used, they rapidly begin to weaken and atrophy (waste away). Strength can decrease as much as 20-30% after only a week of complete bed rest, and it generally takes much longer to regain the strength than it took to lose it.

Decreased muscle strength, together with other structural changes to the nerves and muscles, affects co-ordination and balance, and increases the risk of falls.

Bed rest also causes the bones to lose density because they aren’t performing their normal weight-bearing function. The leg bones are the most likely to be affected. Thinner bones increase the risk of fractures, even with minor falls.

Immobility can also lead to limited joint movement. The cartilage around joints begins to deteriorate, while the connective tissue thickens and the muscles shorten, typically at the hip, knee and shoulder. This negatively affects walking and daily activities. (emphasis mine)

Effects on the heart and blood
Like the muscular system, the cardiovascular system functions best when the body is in an upright position, working against gravity. After just a few days of bed rest, blood starts to pool in the legs. On standing, this can lead to dizziness and falls. (emphasis mine)

Immobility also causes the heart to beat more quickly, and the volume of blood pumped is lower. The volume of blood generally in the body is lower, and there is less oxygen uptake by the body. This results in poorer aerobic fitness and fatigue sets in more easily. (emphasis mine)

The blood also becomes thicker and stickier, which increases the risk of a blood clot forming, especially in the legs (deep vein thrombosis) and the lungs (pulmonary embolism). (emphasis mine)

Effects on the lungs and blood
Bed rest increases the risk of pneumonia and atelectasis (collapse of lung tissue).

Fluid tends to build up in the lungs because the muscles aren’t working to remove excess fluid from the body. It’s harder for the lungs to expand when you’re lying flat, so blood pools in the chest area, leading to decreased lung volume. Coughing is not as effective due to weakened abdominal and chest muscles, causing mucus to collect in the lungs.

Breathing also becomes shallower, which leads to poorer oxygen-carbon dioxide exchange in the lungs.

Effects on the skin
Bed sores or pressure sores are a kind of skin ulcer and are a common result of the additional pressure placed on parts of the body resting on the bed surface: the blood supply to the skin covering these parts becomes insufficient.

Effects on digestion and excretion
Constipation is common, due to several factors including decreased mobility, decreased fluid intake, decreased peristalsis (movement of the digestive tract) and incomplete emptying of the bowels.

Appetite is often suppressed in bedridden patients, and malnutrition and dehydration may occur if proper attention is not paid to diet.

Prolonged bed rest also makes urination less effective. The bladder is harder to empty and tends to retain fluid, which can lead to infection. There is also greater excretion of urinary calcium, which raises the risk for bladder and kidney stones. (emphasis mine)

Incontinence due to bed rest is also common: disorientation, confusion and decreased mobility can all contribute to this problem. (emphasis mine)

Effects on the metabolism and hormonal system
Prolonged bed rest can cause numerous complex changes in the balance of hormones and minerals in the body, and in how the body processes energy.

For example, immobility causes a reduction in the percentage of lean mass to body fat, and raises the risk of developing diabetes: immobile muscles can develop reduced insulin sensitivity, which in turn leads to raised blood sugar levels.

Effects on the brain
Bed rest in combination with the stress of illness are associated with increased risk for various mental health and cognitive issues, including anxiety, depression, irritability, apathy, sleep disturbances and confusion. (emphasis mine)

Many of these ill effects can be greatly reduced by short spells of mild activity – every little bit helps, even if only getting up to walk a few steps every day. Some exercises can even be done while lying down, if you aren’t yet able to stand easily. Be sure to plan and follow an exercise and recovery programme in consultation with your health professionals. (emphasis mine)

It was watching the movie "Shining Through" that I recognized who is the woman Toulouse-Lautrec took as a model for the painting on the left.
It was Melanie Griffith.
I hope that this fact is recognized by the art-world and historians dare to accept the truth.

Friday, October 14

I did a quick translation of this highly important post by Brazilian blogger Eduardo Guimarães who has been working for more than ten years.
It was published on his blog "Blog da Cidadania" - "Citizenship Blog"

Coup plotters to arrest Lula at any moment

by Eduardo Guimarães October 14, 2016

This is a very sad day for this blogger. I have received reliable and credible information that Lula may be arrested at any moment promoting a spectacle set by Globo Channel in a partnership with Car Wash taskforce.

All the mainstream media already have the details of the arresting operation. It will not be a surprise if the arrest takes place next Monday.
The prison has been preceded by successive indictments of the former president, engineered to "start preparing the spirit" of the population.

After the arrest, the judge Sergio Moro will sentence Lula quickly - perhaps even this year - and by the middle of next year he will be sentenced on appeal. All the arrangements have been made.

Coup plotters consider that there will be a public outcry with the measures of suppression of rights and elimination of social programs that come around and, in this context, Lula's recall will rise with unprecedented force.

This is currently being considered the ideal time to arrest Lula because most of society is still very angry with the Worker Party (PT) and that anger tends to blur when it becomes more clear that the coup was struck to take away from people the benefits given precisely by PT.

Lula and close associates will be taken to Curitiba, where the possibility of great popular movements in reaction to the act will be lower.

Not much else to say besides that if this country does not react to this arbitrariness, political prisons will not be restricted to Lula. Lula's arrest will trigger a witch hunt to imprison all the main opponents of the radical right-wing consortium which took power.
The arrest of leftist political leaders will be vital to prevent a major defeat of the right-wing on 2018.

The plan is to make the electronic ballot box having only strong candidates of the right-wing in two years. The only leftist candidates will be silly candidates of the parties PSOL and PSTU, who will not have a chance.

With the implementation of "scorched earth tactics" measures razed as the PEC 241, the "comeback" of the PT is taken for granted by the coup plotters, so they want to arrest Lula and many left leaders as they can while they are still strong, as the parties PSDB and PMDB will soon be politically razed with its genocidal policies in the federal government.

Unfortunately, my source is safe. And I was not taken by surprise. I was sure this was going to happen. The information that was passed to me only surprised me by the timing; I thought that the final coup would be given next year.

However, it makes sense to arrest Lula now. In a few months the effect of PEC 241, withdrawal of labor rights, pension reform, outsourcing and the tightening of social programs will make unacceptable the arrest of the person for which Brazil will return through the scorched-earth policy that PSDB and PMDB are preparing.

I urge each of you that follow me in this 11-year journey to not only disclose this alert but to prepare to fight. Brazil is under a dictatorship and we have to report it to the world. Only international pressure can help us."

So the Swedish poet Tomas Tranströmer wins the Nobel prize for literature. Aside from a couple of long poems available on the net, I haven’t read Tranströmer, yet I feel sure this is a healthy decision in every way. Above all for the Nobel jury. Let me explain.

There are eighteen of them, members of an organization called the Swedish Academy, which back at the end of the 19th century was given the task of awarding the Nobel. At the time two members suggested it was a mistake to accept the job. The Academy’s founding brief, back in 1786, was to promote the “purity, strength, and sublimity of the Swedish language”. Was this compatible with choosing the finest oeuvre of “an idealistic tendency” from anywhere in the world?

All members are Swedish and most of them hold full time professorial jobs in Swedish universities. On the present jury there are just five women and no woman has ever held the presidency. Only one member was born after 1960. This is partly because you cannot resign from the Academy. It’s a life sentence. So there’s rarely any new blood. For the past few years, however, two members have refused to cooperate with deliberations for the prize because of previous disagreements, one over the reaction, or lack of it, to the fatwa against Salman Rushdie and the other over awarding the prize to Elfriede Jelinek, whom he felt was “chaotic and pornographic.”

How do these people decide who are the greatest novelists and/or poets of the day on the international scene? They call on scores of literary experts in scores of countries and pay them to put down a few reflections about possible winners. Such experts are supposed to remain anonymous, but inevitably some have turned out to be acquaintances of those they have nominated.

Let’s try to imagine how much reading is involved. Assume that a hundred writers are nominated every year—it’s not unthinkable—of whom the jury presumably try to read at least one book. But this is a prize that goes to the whole oeuvre of a writer, so let’s suppose that as they hone down the number of candidates they now read two books of those who remain, then three, then four. It’s not unlikely that each year they are faced with reading two hundred books (this on top of their ordinary workloads). Of these books very few will be written in Swedish and only some will be available in Swedish translation; many will be in English, or available in English translation. But since the English and Americans notoriously don’t translate a great deal, some reading will have to be done in French, German or perhaps Spanish translations from more exotic originals.

Remember that we’re talking about poems as well as novels and they’re coming from all over the world, many intensely engaged with cultures and literary traditions of which the members of the Swedish Academy understandably know little. So it’s a heterogeneous and taxing bunch of books these professors have to digest and compare, every year. Responding recently to criticism that in the last ten years seven prizes have gone to Europeans, Peter Englund, the president of the current jury, claimed its members were well equipped for English but concerned about their strengths in such languages as Indonesian. Fair enough.

Let’s pause for a moment, here, and imagine our Swedish professors, called to uphold the purity of the Swedish language, as they compare a poet from Indonesia, perhaps translated into English with a novelist from Cameroon, perhaps available only in French, and another who writes in Afrikaans but is published in German and Dutch and then a towering celebrity like Philip Roth, who they could of course read in English, but might equally feel tempted, if only out of a sense of exhaustion, to look at in Swedish.

Do we envy them this task? Does it make much sense? The two members who a century ago felt the cup should be allowed to pass from them were worried that the Academy would become “a cosmopolitan tribunal of literature”. Something they instinctively felt was problematic. They were not wrong.

Now, let’s imagine that we have been condemned for life to making, year in year out a burdensome and near impossible decision to which the world increasingly and inexplicably ascribes a crazy importance. How do we go about it? We look for some simple, rapid and broadly acceptable criteria that will help us get this pain out of the way. And since, as Borges himself noted, aesthetics are difficult and require a special sensibility and long reflection, while political affiliations are easier and quickly grasped, we begin to identify those areas of the world that have grabbed public attention, perhaps because of political turmoil or abuses of human rights, we find those authors who have already won a huge level of respect and possibly major prizes in the literary communities of these countries and who are outspokenly committed on the right side of whatever political divide we’re talking about, and we select them. So we have the period when the prize went to Eastern block dissidents, or to South American writers against dictatorship, or South African writers against apartheid, or, most amazingly, to the anti-Berlusconi playwright Dario Fo whose victory caused some bewilderment in Italy.

It was an honorable enough formula but alas not every trouble spot boasts its great dissident writer (Tibet, Cechnya), to which we might add that since the prize is perceived as going to the country as much as to the writer, it’s not possible to give it to writers from the same trouble spot two years running. What a conundrum!

Sometimes the jury clearly got their hands burned. Having received so many major literary prizes in Germany and Austria, the left-wing feminist Jelinek seemed a safe choice. But her work is ferocious, often quite indigestible (she’d never win a literary prize in say, Italy or England) and the novel Greed, in particular, which appeared shortly before the prize was awarded, was truly unreadable. I know because I tried, and [tried again] (http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2007/jul/19/how-to-read-elfriede-jelinek/). Had the members of the jury really read it? You have to wonder. Not surprisingly, after the controversy that winner caused they fell back on obvious choices for a while: Pinter, politically appropriate and half forgotten; Vargas Llosa who I somehow imagined had already won the prize many years before.

What a relief then from time to time to say, the hell with it and give it to a Swede, in this case the octogenarian acknowledged as his nation’s finest living poet and a man whose whole oeuvre, as Peter Englund charmingly remarks, could fit into a single slim paperback. A winner, in short, whom the whole jury can read in the original pure Swedish in just a few hours. Perhaps they needed a sabbatical. Not to mention the detail, not irrelevant in these times of crisis, that the $1.5-million-dollar prize will stay in Sweden.

But most healthy of all, a decision like this, which we all understand would never have been taken by say, an American jury, or a Nigerian jury, or perhaps above all a Norwegian jury, reminds us of the essential silliness of the prize and our own foolishness at taking it seriously. Eighteen (or sixteen) Swedish nationals will have a certain credibility when weighing up works of Swedish literature, but what group could ever really get its mind round the infinitely varied work of scores of different traditions. And why should we ask them to do that?

In 2012 Bob Dylan received from the Nobel Peace prize president Obama the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Today Bob received Nobel Prize " "for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition". This is the reason for a literature prize.

I like Bob Dylan but it seems to me that this is another one for the list of those controversial Nobel Prizes. Literature is the leading Nobel Prize of controversy.
Perhaps Nobel Prize permanent secretary Sara Danius who said: "He is a great poet in the English tradition." confused "lyricist" for "lyric".

I'm sure that those who are from the literary field are very disappointed but the majority of people think it is fair and well deserved. A book, is a book, is a book.

I have a bachelor degree in literature and whenever someone comes up with a very beautiful lyric claiming it is "poetry" I ask the person to read it aloud.
Usually, they cannot do read it with a good intonation.
Call me old-fashioned but I don't mix the two arts. I have even already read lyrics as a poem in class to call the attention of students but I always explained to them that it is just like comparing a book and the film based on it. They are different arts.

Wednesday, October 12

"In Brazil, Children's Day (In Portuguese: Dia das Crianças) is celebrated on 12 October, coinciding with Our Lady of Aparecida's day, the country's Patron Saint holiday. It is also the day of the "discovery" of America (Columbus Day), in reference to the "New Continent". In Brazil Children's day is celebrated by kids receiving presents from their parents." (emphasis mine) Wikipedia.

We do not follow the international day November, 20. I dedicate this song to all of those children who are being mistreated or even killed because they are poor and black.

This is a reality and nobody cares. UNICEF claims on their site - The right to grow without violence* - that they are working but in reality, nothing is being done.

*"UNICEF works to mobilize governments and society to transform this situation. In addition, UNICEF has supported improved reporting systems and stimulated specialized care, which strengthen both family and community life." - it is a lie. UNICEF does nothing.

Tuesday, October 11

I have already posted about the film "Julia" and expressed numerous times my admiration by the work of Vanessa Redgrave.
I was watching "Julia" one more time on the notebook which was very close to my vision so it was easier to pay attention to some details like these two "still lives".
It was when Jane Fonda's personage, Lilian, was in Paris.
The first one is for me an homage to Cézanne.
I'm enjoying paying close attention to photography in the movies I'm watching again.

Monday, October 10

I just discovered this insect and I'm amazed. It is the most radical form of camouflage I have ever seen.
Nothing left to say.
Ah! Its scientifical name is "Phyllium bioculatum" but it's known as "leaf insect". It is found in Malaysia.

Sunday, October 9

"For those of you that are evacuating from the coast, I just heard a great tip. It's called the one cup tip. You put a cup of water in your freezer. Freeze it solid and then put a quarter on top of it and leave it in your freezer. That way when you come back after you've been evacuated you can tell if your food went completely bad and just refroze or if it stayed Frozen while you were gone. If the quarter has fallen to the bottom of the cup that means all the food defrosted and you should throw it out. But if the quarter is either on the top or in the middle of the cup then your food may still be ok. It would also be a great idea to leave this in your freezer all the time and if you lose power for any reason you will have this tip to fall back on. If you don't feel good about your food, just throw it out. The main thing is for all to be safe."

Thursday, October 6

They are gorgeous!
Keep them away from paracetamol: "Paracetamol is extremely toxic to cats and should not be given to them under any circumstances as cats lack the necessary enzymes to safely metabolize paracetamol. Paracetamol is also lethal to snakes, and has been used in attempts to control the brown tree snake in Guam." info from here.

Wednesday, October 5

Leonid Afremov paintings are at DeviantART and I just found his work Leonidafremov.
What strikes at a first glance are the colors and the lights. Tiny brushstrokes are used to construct numerous effects.
I did choose this painting because I found it very powerful and the way they are united is amazing. There is no background since it created the "room" where they're dancing, surrounded them giving movements and made them keep dancing.

Tuesday, October 4

DeviantART is a great site to find creative artists that are not in the galleries. I did join it back in 2011 but just now I'm uploading some of m stuffs. This is my page. Click at the above slide show to have a glimpse.

Monday, October 3

Blue Racer Snake is a photography by Jeramie Curtice which was uploaded on March 29th, 2012 here.
This is what Mr. Curtice wrote about this shot:Jeramie Curtice Thanks Sharon. They are blue and fast, hence the name blue racer. This one took off on me almost as fast as I could jog as it found the nearest tree and then stopped at eye level for a pose.
Profile and more pictures by Jeramie Curtice: here.

House fans built from telephone components and an LP vinyl disc as blades.
Photos by Ernesto Oroza.

“Worker, build your machine!”

So Ernesto “Che” Guevara’s proclaimed to Cuba’s industrial sector, shortly after the triumph of the revolutionary movement he helped lead. The year was 1961, and Cuba, increasingly isolated, was experiencing an exodus of foreign companies and investment due to the unfriendly market policies of Fidel Castro’s nascent government. The start of the now famous United States embargo against Cuba meant the large-scale departure of material resources from an island that once relied heavily on American cash and imports. With restrictions on entrepreneurship and individual enterprise, the economy hit rock bottom in the 1970s.

Revolución

Perhaps foreseeing a future that demanded self-sufficiency, Guevara—then Cuba’s Minister of Industries—offered the first ideological push for what would become a way of life for generations of Cubans to come—Cubans who would have no choice but to build and repair, over and over again, both the state factory machines and the smaller machines in their homes. From the endless, ongoing restoration of the iconic 1950s Buicks to the creation of baby toys made from milk cans and dried beans, fabricating goods not officially available on the island became an essential skill.

Castro’s newly formed socialist government nationalized foreign companies and converted workers into the new “bosses” of the industrial sector. He urged them take on reparation jobs and to create spare parts. People started viewing dilapidated machines as the country’s biggest enemy. A drill without a cylinder, a belt saw without a pulley, a worn out mold—these mutilated artifacts terrorized the new society like wounded zombies.

The empty spaces in the machines paralyzed the cogs driving the revolution. The workers started to fill the spaces, which they would do so many times over so many years that machines now have more pieces made from the repairs than from the original parts. The workshops gave names for the assembled or built-from-scratch contraptions; some stuck, others that did not. If a Cuban engineer had returned to the island after 10 years in exile, he’d no longer be an expert. In fact, despite his training, he wouldn’t recognize the contraptions growing out the hands of the more crude practice of design. Whatever he knew about the internal workings of an American technology would already have been substituted for a cruder but equally productive design practice.

This first wave of makers left a trail of invention that changed the course of interacting with technology in Cuba.

Cubans began to bring this repair-mindset home, turning their own households into laboratories. The same engineer would, during his day shift, repair the engine of a Soviet MIG15 jet fighter and, in the evening—faced with a country-wide shortage of matches—build an electric lighter out of a pen and light bulb.

Here lies some irony: The technological disobedience—which the revolution promoted as an alternative to the country’s stalled productive sector—became the most reliable resource for Cubans to navigate the inefficiencies of the state political system. Workers who had devoted their imagination and resourcefulness to keeping the revolution on its feet were then forced to employ those attributes to endure lives short on necessities.

Acumulación

Lack of trust in the success of the revolution turned Cuban homes into warehouses for all kinds of objects—anything that could be useful but unavailable down the line. The accumulation of products led workers to radically question industrial processes and mechanisms. They started looking at objects not with the eyes of an engineer but those of an artisan. Every object could potentially be repaired or reused, even in a different context from its original design.

Accumulation—in this case an automatic gesture—separated the object from the Western intent and lifecycle it was destined for. This is technological disobedience.

When people held onto things, they also kept the technical principles and an idea of how they fit together. In any critical moment, they would scratch their heads to conjure the exact piece that could solve the problem. When the power went out, the fan broke, or the chair snapped, the family kept an ear out for technological whispers from the patios, under the beds, or from obscure corners of rooms guarding piles of old things—either parts or in their entirety.

Seemingly insignificant things were assigned new, useful tasks. The tops of penicillin vials have become the best solution for valves on pressure cookers. Deodorant canisters proved excellent electrical switches (close the lid to turn the electricity on!). Defective fluorescent tubes now make up 3D picture frames. An old 33-rpm vinyl, cut properly, would serve as a fan blade—and its creators could reproduce copies of it. An old and deteriorated Eagle kerosene lamp reappeared when power outages became common, and sometimes a milk bottle or gas tank functioned as the lampshade. Each creation’s new appearance and new function made it unique.

Cubans in this time knew just a few brands: Caribe and Kim TVs, Orbita fans, and Aurika washing machines. The communist market of the 70s prioritized production with a social end: clones of state-commissioned chairs, for example, were distributed across the island. That people thus accumulated identical goods meant that similarly ingenious repair methods popped up throughout. Standardized metal trays in schools, for example, were appropriated by the “maker class” to create a product then not officially in existence on the island: the TV antenna.

No one’s really sure whether the idea inspired each person individually or people actively taught each other. The tray was the only accessible metal for this task—but was its secondary use an inevitable result of the mix of necessity, standard availability of goods, and creative use of them?

Another object mysteriously appeared in many houses: the kerosene lamp. Built with a cylindrical glass container—13 cm high and wide—and inside, dipped in kerosene, a wick holder made from a tube of toothpaste. The container, produced by Comecon—the now-defunct alliance of socialist countries—served dual purposes as a fuel vessel and lampshade. This transformed Cuba’s most recognizable container into its most common kerosene lamp. Necessity and standardized resources meant replicable solutions and repeated technological disobedience.

Throughout the 80s, Soviet subsidies created a decade of relative economic stability and, with that, a greater abundance of resources. Then, with the fall of the Berlin Wall and collapse of the Soviet Union, the Cuban government proclaimed a “Special Period” of extreme rationing and shortages. In 1993, a desperate new law finally permitted—with restrictions—businesses engaged in making and tinkering. A new era of creative enterprise was forced open.

Desobediencia

At the start of the Special Period, instantaneous substitutes, objects, and provisional fixes let Cubans hold on until the end of the crisis. This built worker confidence in homebrewed construction, transport, clothing, or appliances. But these were just reparative solutions of a destroyed or insufficient material reality—and ultimately, just the waiting room for the strongest wave of revolutionary creativity.

While reinventing their lives, an unconscious mentality emerged. As a surgeon becomes desensitized to wounds, Cubans became desensitized to designed objects. They stopped seeing the original purpose of the object; instead it became a sample of parts. This is the first Cuban expression of disobedience in their relationship with objects—a growing disrespect for an object’s identity and for the truth and authority it embodies.

After opening, breaking, repairing, and using them so often at their convenience, the makers ultimately disregarded the signs that make occidental objects a unity, a closed identity. Cubans do not fear the emanating authority that brands like Sony, Swatch, or even NASA, command. If something is broken, it will be fixed—somehow. If it could even be conceived as usable to repair other objects, they might as well save it, either in parts or in its entirety. A new future awaits.

An emblematic object of this building is the “fan-phone”. An improvised repairman remembered, when his fan’s base broke, that he had kept somewhere a broken phone from Communist Germany. He recalled it because the Orbit fan base somewhat resembled the prismatic pyramidal shape of the phone; the inspired creator was interested not in associations or meanings but in the formal analogy based on size and structure. The repaired, rebuilt, and repurposed fan was, at the same time, an outline of the cunning abilities of the individual, a diagram of the accumulation in his house, and an image of his disobedience.

Within the process of repair, repurposing, and reinvention, three key concepts speak to an elevated degree of subversion. Firstly, reconsidering the industrial object from an artisan’s perspective. Secondly, denying the traditional lifecycle of a Western object. And lastly, substituting traditional roles with alternative functions that meet demand.

In the sense of restoration, repairing legitimizes an object’s qualities and allows the maker to become acquainted with an object differently. But sometimes repairing means creating a novel tool; these reparations are influenced by the more radical processes of reinvention and repurposing.

A telling case is that of a charger for non-rechargeable batteries developed in Havana in 2005. Enildo, the device’s creator, wanted to recharge batteries for his wife’s hearing aid. He could connect his new charger to an outlet and, in just 20 minutes, provide 20 days of battery life.

Like Dr. Frankenstein creating his monster, Enildo pieced together diodes from an old radio, fragments of a conductor, and little pieces of sheet metal, placing them atop a piece of plastic pulled from the radio. The new charger, stripped of its original technical purpose, summons memories of diagrams from science class. The goal was to recharge the battery; how it’s done questions the technical and commercial logic scribed upon the batteries.

The reparation, refunctionalization, and reinvention show leaps of imagination in opposition to the concepts of innovation favored by the logic of Western mass production. And each leap allowed for some small adjustment to the poverty that most of the disobedient inventors lived under.

Technological disobedience in Cuba is not just about the transgression of authority of industrial design and the way of life it projects onto its users. This practice also detours the overarching restrictions of the Cuban system. Houses all over contain rebellious inventions: lunch trays receiving television signals; chopped-up salsa LPs blowing cool air; deodorant cans turning lights on and off; and electrical components now reviving non-reusable batteries.

But technological disobedience doesn’t respect boundaries. It wiggles its way in to the social, political, and economic—realms that inspire subversion in their own rights. It keeps life flowing for those who participate. It interrupts the endless flow of Western goods and the constant push of communism on the island. And it keeps inspiring hands to create things that will make life just a little better for their owners.